Why on earth would Jules Feiffer—a Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist, the creator of an Oscar-winning animated character, and author of an Obie Award–winning play—write a nice, normal memoir about his life and accomplishments? He wouldn't. Instead he gives us this wry, self-effacing, mischievous, pithy collection of satirical episodes and personal social commentary. From a skinny kid dodging bullies and an overbearing mother in the Bronx to working as an apprentice to Will Eisner, from surviving as an army draftee to waking up America to the civil rights movement and the war in Vietnam, Feiffer gives us the absurd world he lived in, with punch lines (and a bunch of cartoons).

"Resonant, self-lacerating and frequently hilarious.... The voice in Backing Into Forward is not spry, not pretty energetic for an old person, but youthful, full of insouciance, vanity and playfulness. While other accomplished men bronze their success or dip it in amber, Feiffer treats his own as one big, wonderful caper."—NYTBR